Conservative DWP calls pre-sanction interrogations 'Health & Work Conversations'

A conversation in theory involves balance of bargaining power and ability of both sides to discuss their concerns. If you follow the link http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bargaining+power, you will realise that such conversations with benefit claimants is not what this Conservative Government is about.(1)

'Austerity' driving Conservative Government — and its Blairite predecessors — are and have been far more about finding fault with claimants so that they can cut our benefits and/or sanction us in the name of 'protecting the public purse'. Their savings are not really savings and their lack of monitoring service provision and recruitment and retention of Disability Employment Advisers have long demonstrated that they don't really care for claimant or staff wellbeing.(2)

Now, it emerges via a Freedom of Information (FoI) Request that the Department for Work & Pensions intend to further weaken the bargaining power of disability benefit claimants by calling interrogations toward sanctioning Employment & Support Allowance claimants 'Health & Work Conversations'.(3)

I am reminded of Theresa May's insistence that those made homeless by the Grenfell Tower blaze in a Conservative-led local authority should be rehoused with supreme urgency. Such supreme urgency can lead to people being offered places that are unsuitable at the best of times, and for the places to be offered long before the prospective rehousing fodder are in an emotional state fit to make any long-term commitments.

The result would be that under long-established legislation, after turning down three offers, the rehousing fodder could be deemed to have made themselves 'intentionally homeless'.

What will the Department for Work & Pensions do to restore the trust of economically vulnerable people after successive Governments have screwed up on Disability Equality and Disability Rights issues for many people's life times? 'Care in the community', anybody?

Note

http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bargaining+power
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/private-legal-safeguarding-of.html
https://benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3647-being-asked-about-your-values-could-lead-to-an-esa-sanction

Brent Council's 'stonewalling until complainants give up'

Former LB Brent Human Resources Director Cara Davani left Brent Council's employ under very shadowy circumstances, and some locals have been asking questions about amounts and reasons for severance payment, while Brent Council has maintained an insistence that the public has no right to know, it's all confidential between employer and ex-staff member. Brent Council: Same two questions — why no answers? (1)

Guest blogger on the Wembley Matters blog asks for people who agree that local residents have a right to know such matters not only leave a comment, but also ask their local councillors to raise questions on these matters. (2)

So I have left my comment on the blog piece: (3)

My understanding re the amount of any payoff is that when a CEO leaves, say, a major bank, the amount becomes public knowledge. Maybe that is in the interests of 'keeping shareholders on board' as it indicates some 'transparency'.

Brent Council, in proferring 'confidentiality' as grounds for not disclosing the amount of any such payment to Ms C Davani, seems to me to be saying, "Council Tax payers have no right to know how much of their money is lavished on former staff in such settlements.

I shall forward link to this blog piece to Kilburn Unemployed group members so that those who live in LB Brent can add their comments.

Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Notes

(1) http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/brent-council-same-two-questions-why-no.html
(2) ibid.
(3) Comments form http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/brent-council-same-two-questions-why-no.html#comment-form

Dying for DWP recognition as 'genuine' claimants?

By Argotina Schmirgle of Kwug

Originally published on 13 June on Benefit Tales blog as

Many people whose benefits have been stopped have serious health conditions, so of course more are dying, admits DWP

Yet again Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has blocked the publication of statistics showing how many people have died within six weeks of having their benefits stopped.

These figures were routinely published until 2012, when this government’s Welfare Reform Act  started to bite. Since then the DWP has steadfastly refused to publish new statistics, saying:

1. They were too expensive to gather and: 
2. That so many people requested the figures that the requests themselves were ‘vexatious’ and could therefore be ignored. 

Direct requests to the DWP from several MPs have had no more luck.

Now the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), an independent authority set up to uphold public information rights, has agreed that there is no reason not to publish the figures. And yet again the DWP is trying to wriggle out.

What struck me most in this article from the Huffington Post was this warning from the DWP:
“The DWP  warned it was irresponsible to suggest a causal link between the death of an individual and their benefit claim, and that mortality rates among people with serious health conditions are likely to be higher than those among the general population.”(1)

Well, The system of disability assessments was supposed to sort out who needs disability benefits. The DWP’s warning demonstrates that they don’t see people with serious health conditions who are more likely to die as being in need of benefits. And if they are being kicked off their benefits and then dying, that’s just fine as long as the Tories can dodge publishing the figures..

The DWP takes its orders from the Conservative Government. And David Cameron and his ministers appear to be completely at ease with the idea of stripping seriously ill people of their benefits and them subsequently dying. If those people die, well, they were more likely to die anyway.

I read over and over again in comments here and elsewhere on the net of people who have been thrown off disability benefits as ‘fit to work’, but cannot then get unemployment benefits because the Job Centre deems them ‘Unfit to work’. I’m personally trying to help 2 people in this exact situation right now. As a result of losing their sickness benefits and having no income, both have been hit by a spiral of depression which made it impossible to appeal against the decision in the one month time slot allowed by the DWP.

More than 18,000 people have signed a Change.org petition in under a week after the DWP appealed a decision to release the sensitive figures

I can’t leave this topic without mentioning the tireless campaigning to get these figures published.over several years by John Pring of the Disability News Service.(3) If the government is pushed into a corner it can’t wriggle out of and forced to release these figures, it will largely be thanks to John.

Notes

(1) Huffington Post: DWP Block Release of Figures on Number of People Dying After Benefits Stopped. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/06/11/statistics-refused-benefits-death_n_7561918.html
 (2) Change.org petition: Publish the statistics showing how many people have died after their benefits were stopped. https://www.change.org/p/hm-courts-and-tribunal-service-publish-stats-showing-how-many-people-have-died-after-their-benefits-stopped
(3) Disability News Service: http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/

The DWP as a law unto itself

Why the DWP’s costs for fighting Judges' decisions will never be known

Republished from Benefits and Work Publishing

Category: Latest news

Created: Tuesday, 29 July 2014 11:27

In recent months, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has fought a fierce legal battle to prevent the publication of the risk register into Iain Duncan Smith's Universal Credit scheme, along with other documents into concerns and problems with the plan. The information commissioner ruled it should be released, minus the risk register. A tribunal agreed, but wanted the risk register published too.

The DWP fought the case tooth-and-nail but lost. It appealed and lost that too, this time with a venomous response from a judge who could see "no support for the argument" and pointed out that the department had not "provided any persuasive evidence". The DWP asked for permission to appeal again and has been granted the opportunity to do so at an oral hearing in a few months.

How much is all this costing, you might wonder? Well wonder all you like, because you'll never find out.

Ian Dunt’s FOI to the DWP asking for costs came back recently with a flat refusal, as he expected. "The department does not keep a record of the time its staff spend on particular Freedom of Information case work so the information you seek is not held," it said. The full cost to the public purse would have involved the costs of the DWP, the Treasury Solicitors Department and the Information Commissioner's Office, but even this small piece of the puzzle was considered confidential.

These legal cases are not small fry. The grade of barrister involved in them usually cost £3,000-plus a day and countless government appeals mean they go on for months, even when the judge's disparaging remarks have already made clear they have almost no chance of success.

Read the full article in Politics.co.uk
Our thanks to Jim Allison for spotting this for us

 A new privatisatition threat

Message from retired but still active social policy researcher Anne Gray of Tottenham, who has written extensively about workfare since even before this blog was created.

Reading the below, we might wonder when the Government or any political party will offer us a Referendum on the matter of contracts that are "'protected' against being rescinded by a future government" or even the decades long jobcentre-based practice that states that contracts involving the particiipation of economically vulnerable people are "too confidential" for even the conscripted economically vulnerable person to have access to! (Through that practice, the jobcentre has consistently denied Swheatie 'unsupervised access' to copies of Action Plans and reports pertaining to him for as far back as 1978.)

'Commercial confidentiality' also rules that the amount Atos Healthcare gets in bonuses for declaring vulnerable and even terminally ill people 'fit for work' or 'fit for work related activity' are too confidential for the public to have access to.

You may have seen George Monbiot's article in the Guardian about the US/EU free trade deal (official name Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) - if not read
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/us-trade-deal-full-frontal-assault-on-democracy?INTCMP=SRCH


The NHS is especially at risk from the proposed new opening up of service industry tenders to American companies on the same terms as EU ones. Furthermore, the agreement is likely to propose that any contracts are 'protected' against being rescinded by a future government!

More background at http://www.savelondonnhs.org.uk/index.php/no-to-the-eu-us-trade-agreement
and
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/david-owen/lord-owen-condemns-%E2%80%9Cconspiracy-of-silence%E2%80%9D-on-eu-us-trade-deal


There was a petition about this at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/47102 but it closed in September with less than 12000 signatures. You can still sign a less hard-hitting one at http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-the-british-government-joining-the-transatlantic-trade-and-investment-partnership which only has a few hundred signatures and needs many more. You can comment there, as I did, that the NHS is a big issue.


We need to campaign actively about this- it's as important as the EU Services Directive. Please alert your union, write to MPs etc.

Anne Gray